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On your desk, there are a variety of hats, one by one, ready for you to pickup and wear at any given moment. You’ve learned you need to know a little bit about everything and a lot about other things. While you manage all of the hats you need to wear, you have to do so quickly. Time is crucial.

Making the most out of your content marketing doesn’t require 40 hours a week, but a few smart tactics. Contributing some of your time and plenty of effort will pay off in the long run.

Plan and Tackle:

You already plan your marketing initiatives for the month, quarter and maybe even year. Use those plans as groundwork for your content marketing efforts! Each month, review what you have planned for the following month. What major promotions are in the works? Is it the “season” to sell a certain product or service?

Also, look beyond what is going on in your own industry. Major and minor holidays, local and national events, trending topics…pay attention to what your audience is talking about and what interests them. How can you incorporate those topics into relatable material for your brand?

Once you develop a monthly plan, start creating and start scheduling. Create as much content as possible ahead of time, but leave open slots to respond to topics and events as they happen. Revisit your plan on a weekly basis to make sure your team is on the same page. Make adjustments as needed.

January is here and a local coffee shop knows it’s time to start introducing winter flavors into their menu. With the weather cooling down, way down, they can plan accordingly to stay relevant with their content.

Seek Help

Make your job easier by seeking help from your coworkers and other writers. Often times, valuable information about a certain subject can be found from your co-worker in the next office or even a colleague down the street.

A coffee shop that sales the local bakery’s pastries has a perfect opportunity to collaborate together. What pastries taste the best with what frothy caffeinated drink? That’s content for both companies, promoted to both companies’ customers and a great way to promote your products in an informational way.

Use your resources, own the voice of your brand and be creative on how you connect with your audience.

Distribute and Distribute Again

After the coffee shop has collaborated with the bakery and the content is ready, it’s go time.

Determine what channels you plan to use to distribute the content: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Email…etc.

Remember to tweak your headline + creative based upon the channel you are using. What may work well for you to share on Instgram, won’t work as well on LinkedIn. Instagram is heavily concentrated on images and strong visuals, keep the creative that way. Don’t bombard your imagery with headlines or text. For the LinkedIn audience, the coffee shop could take the approach with their message as a quick “pick-me-up” treat for those days that feel like Mondays. Again, use the content to associate and be relevant to the audience of that particular platform.

Know your audience, know the platform and pay attention. Don’t be afraid to re-post content more than once on social media. Only 5% – 7% of Twitter followers see unpromoted tweets and often times, they are barely paying attention to those. Make your job even easier by scheduling posts through marketing automation software (bonus: all of your social media platform reporting is one place to easily digest).